Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 18,195 Cubs cards from 249 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1971 Topps #441 Milt Pappas  In his first full season with the Cubs, Pappas had a career-high 17 wins.  He also tied for the league league with five shutouts.

1980s: 1984 Donruss #189 Fergie Jenkins  This is a career-capper card for Fergie.  The Cubs released him during spring training in 1984, ending his Hall of Fame career.

1990s: 1992 Topps Traded Gold #68 Derrick May The 1992 season was a good one for rookie Derrick May.  After hitting .367 in eight games at AAA, he was called up and spent the rest of the season in Chicago.  He hit a respectable .274 and added 8 homers and 45 RBIs.

2000s: 2005 Champions #438 Fergie Jenkins More Fergie!  The picture is from his second run with the Cubs.  And what is supposed to  be on the right side of the card?  Looks like they forgot to add something.

2010s: 2013 Team Issued Season Ticket Holders #8 Andre Dawson  #8 got card #8 in the set issued by the Cubs in 2013.

2020 Bowman Cubs Prospects

The prospect portion of 2020 Bowman has 150 players.  Just four of them are Cubs.  The Cubs Cupboard is pretty bare.

 

 

And who do we have here?

Aramis Ademan, has a .233 career average over four seasons.  His highest level of play is High A.

Miguel Amaya, has a .243 career average over four seasons.  His highest level of play is High A.

Brennen Davis, has a .303 career average over two seasons.  His highest level of play is Low A.  Hey - -a .300 hitter!

Brailyn Marquez, has a 16-12 career record over four seasons.  His highest level of play is High A.

Like I said, the Cub-board is bare!

Bowman 2020 Base Set Cubs

No MSA stuff today!

Instead I've got stuff that is about as current as we have, the 2020 Bowman Cubs.  The set came out last week, about a month past the scheduled release date.  It seems very odd to have Bowman in hand before a pitch has been thrown this season.

The base Bowman set has a checklist of 100 players.  The good news is that five of the 100 are Cubs.

 

 

 

 

The bad news is that Topps has once again subjected us to a card for Robel Garcia.  Enough of him already!

I know that Bowman is the set for prospects, and I'll have the prospect cards tomorrow.  But why does Topps have to put so many rookies in the base set?  Alzolay, Garcia, and Hoerner have a combined total of 47 games played in the big leagues.  Instead of them, how about a card for Rizzo, Lester, or Schwarber.  They've played in 2,111 games.

Topps Goes MSA

Yesterday I showed some MSA cards that contained logos.  Today I've got Topps going the other direction.

Topps has done baseball cards since 1951 and they've always included team logos, except for those nasty looking cards for players with airbrushed hats when they played for a new team.

But I found a Topps set that goes the way of MSA, and includes no logos.

This is from a set Topps produced for Nestle in 2002.  There are just six cards in the set.  Was it too expensive to get an MLB license for just six cards?  For whatever the reason, Nestle didn't get one and so Topps had to fire up the airbrush.

I must admit that Topps did a much better job of removing the logos compared to the work they did in the late '60s and early '70s.

Besides the Nestle cards, I can come up with only one other Topps product with no logos.

Can anyone come up with another besides the 1973 candy lids?

MSA Oddities

Below are some cards produced by MSA, the Drakes cards from 1986 - 1988, and the 1993 Hostess set.  These are both oddities among the MSA cards and discs.  Take a look and spot what's different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you figure out the difference.  It's a pretty big one....logos!  I believe that these are the only MSA cards to have no airbrushing and instead, visible team logos.

With Drakes, MSA took over for Topps, who produced the sets from 1981 through 1985.  Topps had and MLB license and all of their Drakes cards showed logos.  When MSA took over in 1986, the logos stayed.  I wonder if that was something that Drakes required?  Did they not want to go logoless after year of cards with the logos?

The Hostess card comes from 1993 and it was the first Hostess card since the cards on the box bottoms in the 1970s.  The '70s cards were made by Topps, so like Drakes, did Hostess insist on logos?

Maybe its just a dessert-cake thing, but kudos to Drakes and Hostess for keeping the logos!

My List of MSA Cubs Cards

The 49 MSA baseball card sets include a total of 59 Cubs players.  Luckily for me I already had 50 of them in my collection. I was well-familiar with the logoless cards.  I just didn't realize that many of them were MSA creations.

Using Sportlots I was able to track down eight of the eleven.  I'm left chasing just one, from the 1986 General Mills set.  Anyone have an extra Gary Matthews card lying around??

Here's my MSA Cards Cubs checklist. The name in bold is the one card that I'm missing.

1986	Burger King	No Cubs
1986	Dorman's Cheese	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1986	Drakes	Moreland, Sandberg
1986	General Mills	Matthews, Sandberg, Smith
1986	Kellers	No Cubs
1986	Meadow Gold	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1986	True Value	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1987	Burger King	Sandberg
1987	Drakes	Moreland, Sandberg
1987	General Mills	Sandberg
1987	Kraft	Davis, Sandberg
1987	M&M's	Sandberg
1987	Ralston Purina	Sandberg
1987	Stuart Superstars	Davis, Dawson, Sandberg
1988	Chef Boyardee	Dawson, Sandberg
1988	Drakes	Dawson, Sutcliffe
1988	Nestle	Dawson
1989	Cereal (Ralston Purina) Superstars	Dawson
1989	Gardners	No Cubs
1989	JJ Nissen	Grace
1990	All American	Dawson, Sandberg
1990	Jumbo Seeds	Sandberg
1990	Post	Grace, Sandberg
1990	Wonder	Sandberg, Walton
1991	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1991	Jumbo Seeds	Dawson
1991	Mootown Snackers	Sandberg
1991	Post	Grace, Sandberg
1992	Diet Pepsi	Sandberg
1992	French's	Sandberg
1992	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1992	Jimmy Dean Living Legends	No Cubs
1992	Jimmy Dean Rookie Stars	No Cubs
1992	Jumbo Seeds	No Cubs
1992	Mootown Snackers	Dawson
1992	Post	Sandberg
1993	Duracell	Dawson, Sandberg
1993	Hostess	Sandberg
1993	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1993	Jimmy Dean Rookie Stars	No Cubs
1993	Metz Bakery	Dawson, Grace, Sandberg
1993	Milkbone	Girardi
1993	Post	Sandberg
1994	Post	Grace
1994	Tombstone	Grace
1995	Kraft	Sosa
1995	Post	No Cubs
1995	Tombstone	Sosa
1996	Pizza Hut	No Cubs

MSA or Not MSA

On Saturday I showed my master list of MSA card sets.   Today I've got three more sets that may also belong on the list, but the cards lack the ©MSA designation.

Up first for your consideration are the 1993 and 1994 Kraft cards.  Let's start by taking a look at the Kraft cards from 1993, 1994, and 1995.

There are similar features in all three years - lack of logos, the set name "Singles Superstars,"  the popup style card, the card number on the front.

This is from the back of the 1995 card, so we know it was produced by MSA.

  

These are what we have on the '93 and '94 cards.  They both lack any sort of copyright information.  There's nothing from the Players Association or MSA.  But all three were printed in Canada, which is another similarity.

So, do we put the 1993 and 1994 sets on the MSA list?  I'm leaning towards a yes.

The third possible set for inclusion is the 1995 Jimmy Dean's All Time Greats set.

Again, there was a similar set with the MSA designation.

 

The 1992 Jimmy Dean Living Legends set was made by MSA.

 

Three years later came a set from Jimmy Dean called All Time Greats.  It's got no logos, like the MSA sets.  But there is no Players Association marking.  Instead, they have a designation from the MBL Players Alumni.  That makes this one a little trickier.  I'm leaning towards not MSA.  What do you think?